Gadget retailer IWOOT goes open source
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| Online gadget specialist I Want One of Those (IWOOT) has chosen to deploy
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell as part of its ongoing open source
| strategy.
|
| The deployment is part of the online gadget retailer's strategy to reduce IT
| costs by migrating its infrastructure to open source-based technology
| components, having moved its website and other front-end IT systems to Red
| Hat last year.
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http://www.itpro.co.uk/servers/news/126380/gadget-retailer-iwoot-goes-open-source.html
Related:
http://www.levanta.com/linuxstudy/EMA_Levanta-Linux_RR.pdf
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| Executive Summary
| In various older studies, Microsoft and some analysts claimed
| Linux has a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than
| Windows. They attributed the difference mainly to higher system
| management costs, and concluded that the higher TCO
| outweighed the much lower license and acquisition costs for Linux.
| However, in a new study of over 200 Linux enterprises, Enterprise
| Management Associates (EMA) found that this
| perception is no longer accurate. Sophisticated management tools
| now allow Linux management to be fast, effective, and
| inexpensive. With far lower acquisition costs, Linux is now a
| cost-effective alternative to Windows.
| EMA analyzed the cost factors cited in previous studies and found
| the following results:
| • Provisioning – 75% of administrators using sophisticated
| tools can provision a system in less than 1 hour; one
| third can provision a system in less than 30 minutes.
| • Patch management – most Linux administrators spend less
| than 5 minutes per server per week on patch management.
| Sophisticated management tools reduce this effort even
| further.
| • Configuration management – supporting multiple versions of
| a given distribution has no discernible impact on
| Linux management. In some cases, respondents actually had
| more versions of Windows than Linux.
| • Reliability – most respondents reported 99.99% or higher
| availability for their Linux systems. A significant number
| (17%) report no downtime at all.
| • Problem resolution – in over 60% of cases, when problems
| occur in Linux environments they are diagnosed and
| repaired in less than 30 minutes, over 8 times faster
| than industry average.
| • Management and support – 88% of enterprises with Linux and
| Windows spend less effort managing Linux; 97%
| believe it is, at worst, the same for both systems.
| Respondents with sophisticated management tools all report
| Linux management is the same or easier than Windows
| management.
| • Storage management – enterprises with sophisticated
| management tools did not find any significant difference in
| storage management effort or utilization for either
| Windows or Linux.
| • Resource costs – most administrators, for either Linux or
| Windows, earn under $60k. Salaries for combined
| Linux/Windows administrators are only marginally higher
| than for Linux-only administrators. Linux skills are
| readily available.
| • Consulting and training costs – 79% of enterprises spent
| nothing on Linux consulting, and 63% spent nothing on
| training. Only 4% spent over $10K on consulting or training.
| In addition, this research found the following in areas not
| adequately addressed in previous studies:
| • Acquisition costs – for similar environments, Linux
| acquisition costs can be almost $60,000 less per server than
| Windows in software costs alone. Windows also incurs
| higher hardware costs.
| • Productivity – Linux tends to be more productive, as Linux
| administrators tend to manage more servers than
| Windows administrators, and Linux systems tend to handle
| greater workloads than Windows systems.
| • Security Management – 75% of Linux administrators spend
| less than 10 minutes per server per week managing
| security. With sophisticated management tools, this goes
| up to over 85%.
| • Virus and Spyware Management – 95% of Linux administrators
| with sophisticated tools spend less than 10
| minutes per server per week managing viruses and spyware.
| Respondents strongly endorsed Linux as inherently
| less vulnerable. No administrator reported spending more
| time on Linux than Windows.
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